ND1102114

Title: 7-Eleven, Greyhound Launch Nationwide Cash-Payment Ticketing Option

Description: The new partnership allows customers paying with cash to book bus tickets online and pay for them at a nearby 7-Eleven store.

Page Content:

DALLAS ? Greyhound and 7-Eleven Inc.� announced yesterday that customers nationwide can purchase bus tickets online or over the phone with cash, giving them access to special fares and offerings currently available only via the Internet with a credit or debit card.

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Through the program Greyhound?s cash customers can purchase tickets online and pay for them at 7-Eleven stores, turning them into local ?Greyhound ticketing offices.?

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?About 50 percent of Greyhound?s customers use cash to pay for their bus tickets, but until now there has not been a way to deliver exclusive online discounts to this constituency or even to allow these customers to pay for tickets in advance by phone or over the web,? said Dave Leach, president and CEO of Greyhound. ?Through our relationships with 7-Eleven and PayNearMe, we can now increase savings for all of our cash customers while eliminating the hassle of making an extra trip to the terminal. This is our way of making life easier for our loyal cash customers.?

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Consumers interested in purchasing a Greyhound ticket with cash can go to greyhound.com to select a schedule and put a ticket on hold for up to 48 hours. Customers then print a payment barcode and take it to a 7-Eleven store, where they can purchase the ticket at the register. To make a reservation by phone, customers first go to any one of the 6,400 participating 7-Eleven stores nationwide to pick up a re-usable Greyhound card.

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These new ticketing options are particularly significant to the 25 percent of American households that do not have a debit or credit card. For these unbanked and under-banked consumers, purchasing a transportation ticket with cash has traditionally been a time-consuming and difficult process, requiring special trips to a ticket office or the purchase of an expensive pre-paid debit card. In contrast, PayNearMe?s technology allows consumers to use payment barcodes or Greyhound cards to obtain tickets in their own neighborhoods 24-hours a day.

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Greyhound tested this first-of-its-kind program in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex over a three-month period earlier this year.

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"7-Eleven has made a strong commitment to delivering valuable services to consumers, and clearly our Dallas/Fort Worth-area customers responded positively to the option of purchasing Greyhound tickets through our stores,? said Jesus Delgado-Jenkins, 7-Eleven senior vice president of merchandising, marketing and logistics. ?By working with Greyhound and PayNearMe, we can offer consumers a simple and innovative cash-payment solution for their traveling needs.??

Content Subject: Marketing/Merchandising

Formatted Article Date: November 2, 2011

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